Catalina Read online

  When my food comes Mary gets up. I look down at my plate, then out the window. I feel the wind her body creates when she passes by. My mind goes completely blank—an excuse would be impossible. I have a strong urge to vomit. When I look up she’s not in the room. I call the waiter over and ask where the woman went. I’m almost shaking.

  “What woman?” he asks.

  “The one eating a salad right over there, where did she go?”

  He leans in. “To the bathroom, miss.”

  I push my credit card in his hand and say if he’s fast I’ll tip him in cash. I put two twenties on the table so he knows I mean business. When he’s gone I can feel the hair on my forearms, how it runs up along my shoulders and neck. I’m holding my breath.

  It’s just the scarf and me now. It’s draped over the chair like a silk refugee, trembling under the ceiling vent. Outside in the hall I can hear the hotel staff and customers, phones ringing, elevator doors opening and shutting, the satisfying click of heels on marble.

  I’m very quick about it. I cross the room and shove the scarf into my purse. I meet the waiter at the hostess stand and sign there. He offers to-go boxes.

  “Not hungry,” I say, and head for the door.

  Outside the humidity beats down. I’m fingering the scarf and breathing hard. It’s exactly how I thought it would feel—stiff, smooth, and sturdy. Once in Central Park I examine it closely. It fits perfectly across my shoulders, a shawl really. Creased from where Mary had knotted it around her neck. I can smell her perfume now, Dior Diorissimo. I had bought it for her on Eric’s behalf many times before, a floral scent that tickles my nose. I have several thoughts at once: turn it in to a lost and found; rip it to pieces; keep it for myself.

  3

  There are large glossy photos of Santa Monica in dark frames just above the hotel bathroom toilet: the Ferris wheel at night, slightly blurred and out of focus, and seashells shot in the style of Edward Weston. I remove them, pausing to consider launching them over the balcony, but instead hide them in the closet.

  I’m feeling refreshed from my nap and I finish unpacking my duffel bag: hair products, a towel, several bathing suits, and a beauty bag that contains, along with makeup, various prescription pills stolen from Mother.

  I line the pill bottles in a neat little row on the countertop. Some are from last year, the labels worn. Thank God Mother is a vain, nervous woman. She keeps a collection of doctors. It makes her feel good, I think, to have someone to call, someone paid to listen. And where does it hurt, Mrs. Fisher? She amasses pills in great quantities, but rarely takes them—it’s a comfort just to have them on hand. This one for nerves, this one for energy, these for arthritic pain, migraines, sleep deprivation, sluggishness. They are flat, pale colors in odd shapes—like wedding sweets or old-timey valentines.

  To keep them from rolling around in my duffel I had wrapped them in the scarf. I should use her name: I wrapped Mother’s pills in Mary’s scarf.

  There are many bottles. Probably too many, I think. So I combine a few that look similar. Who cares? I definitely do not. After all, I’m doing what Eric suggested on that last day: Go home. See your mother in Bakersfield. Be open to possibility. Fine, a blue one if the mood strikes, or maybe a white, or seafoam green. So many possibilities.

  I tuck the scarf into the bedside drawer, pausing to rub the silk between my fingers. It really is beautiful, the fabric heavy and light at once.

  I picture Mary coming back from the Plaza bathroom, the Palm Court empty, her scarf gone. She’d ask the waiter, and what would keep him from describing me? Jesus, would they try to hunt me down? Would Mary know me by description? Would they have video?

  It’s one of the few gifts I did not help pick for her. I consider calling Eric, but I’ve never called him at home. I’m not even sure I can find the number. Instead I call room service and order another Bloody Mary, which, I tell myself, is basically a salad.

  An older man delivers room service this time. Gray whiskers, a wrinkled uniform, and judgment in his eye. He tells me he’s never delivered just one drink to a room before. The drink is perfectly cold, though, and has the right kind of garnish: two olives and celery that goes crunch.

  It’s just before sunset when I decide a jog is a good idea. Maybe because the sky is the perfect mix of light, that time of day when you can’t help but want to be outside. Unless you are afraid of the raccoons living in the Santa Monica sewers. They love dusk too. Two of the little hoodlums are pillaging the dumpsters behind Third Street and Broadway. Two more appear on the bluff, tackling trash cans as I jog by. Their black-masked faces pause when I pass. I think I hear one hiss, so I pick up my pace.

  The Bloody Mary is doing me no favors. I’m slow, barely able to walk fast, and with each block I taste tomato and cracked pepper.

  By the time I reach the end of the bluff, I’m sweating and my right calf is screaming. I stop to sit, the bench wet from the marine layer. They call this June Gloom, the ocean and sky the same matte gray, the horizon one big wash. I take out the Vicodin I had tucked into my pocket. There isn’t a water fountain so I bite the sides of my tongue to produce enough saliva. The pill catches a little so I taste bitter chalk but then I settle in, waiting for that smoothness to wash over me, the weightlessness. I can see the Ferris wheel from here, jutting out at the end of the pier, its lights flashing in the twilight.

  When I was five, Mother took my brothers and me here, almost to this exact spot. It was the first time I’d seen the ocean. We didn’t come to tan, or swim, or eat corn dogs. We lined up with everyone else in Palisades Park to watch a winter storm finish off what was left of the Santa Monica Pier. The lower half had crumbled in January, and just when they started to rebuild, another storm had come. Mother was upset she had missed the first spectacle, scouring newspapers and magazines for photos and taking them to show her friends at the salon.

  I remember how crowded it was, how we were bundled up like babushkas and how the man next to me had a tripod and scowled whenever I tried to look at it. The storm was furious: I remember being scared at how the palm trees bent, as if they might snap off and impale us. I cried, and Mother said I’d have to wait in the car if I was going to be a baby. Then the ocean shrank back, but only for a moment, before it came crashing forward. The crane being used to repair the damage caused by the first storm was swept into the water and everyone pushed against one another to get a better look, shouting. My brothers hollered like beasts—rain pelting them—and Mother smiled. She smiled. And the crane beat with the waves against the pier until it cracked and gave way and everyone yelled into the storm to congratulate it.

  I don’t remember my next trip to Santa Monica. Probably when a friend got a car and we explored the beaches for ourselves. How it seemed like you had to trek across the sand forever until you finally reached the water. How if you drove north to Malibu, to the cliffs and mountains, you could tan and swim and explore tide pools. How farther south there were even sandier beaches—and bonfires, and boys whose schools had stables, and who might sneak you in to see their horses. But once there, they always, always, wanted something in return.

  Near where I’m sitting, a group of homeless men stir. I can hear one of them smacking his lips together in an exaggerated yawn.

  I take the long way back to the hotel through the manicured neighborhoods behind Palisades Park. It smells better back here, less like piss and more like the flowering magnolia trees that line the sidewalks. People are jogging in beautiful, athletic pairs. A flock of cyclists pedal by and I catch words from them shouting at one another as they ride. A group of stroller-toting mamas speed-walk across a four-way stop. Finches and crows hang out on a park lawn together, a screeching racket.

  Have I moved back to this place?

  It’s too soon to be thinking that. I still half expect Eric to show up and—I don’t know what. Leave his wife? Give me my job back? This afternoon, when I woke up from my nap, I lay in bed with the sheet over my face, eyes open so ever
ything was soft and warm, and I thought of him. That full bottom lip, that intense stare. Just when it was getting good—Eric’s hand exactly where I needed it to be, my face uncovered for air, and because I wanted to have my eyes open for this part, always open for this part—the maid walked in. Standing at the end of the bed in her little white uniform, her creased face looking at me with horror, which she buttoned up real quick, mumbling, Excuse me, I come back, I come back as she backed out of the room, picking up one of the Bloody Mary glasses lying empty on the floor.

  4

  I decide not to call Charly just yet. It’s been too long, and a girl has to acclimate. I rent a car and drive Pacific Coast Highway with all the windows down.

  My favorite beach to sunbathe is private and just behind Malibu Colony. I haven’t been in years, but if there’s anywhere I can be alone and content, it’s this beach. The only way to get to it is by scaling large boulders and then ducking through an abandoned beach house that burned down years ago.

  It’s a Tuesday, so the roads are clear, and when I get there the place is totally empty. No surfers, no one sitting out on their decks, nothing. The burned-down beach house is exactly where I left it.

  How does anyone go to the beach and not want to be naked? The sun glints off the rolling waves, the palm tree tops flutter as if they had tinsel hair, and the sand is almost scalding. I find my spot, tucked behind a boulder on a gentle slope, so even if someone walks by I’m hidden from view. I leave my clothes and bikini in a neat pile and lie on my towel. I want to roast.

  I hear gulls in the distance. The waves. A breeze makes the palm trunks creak softly. Somewhere, a wasp. No city noises. No cars, no horns, no talking and shouting—gone are those sounds that make a place familiar. It hits hard: I am alone. A vicious little shiver crawls up my back.

  I’m about to put my clothes back on when a figure blocks the sun.

  He’s tall, athletic, and whistling a tune I can’t quite place.

  I grow indignant under his gaze, a little nervous. Why doesn’t he walk on? He kneels down, tilting his head, watching me.

  “The water is warm,” he says with an accent.

  I push myself up on my elbows. “What song were you whistling?” He has very dark eyes and a shock of black hair.

  “That?” he says, and sits as if the question were an invitation. “A very old Mexican song about lost love—que tengo miedo a perderte, perderte después.”

  “Tragic,” I say without moving.

  He continues to study me. The tilt of his mouth suggests he likes what he sees.

  Fine, I think. Let him look. I’m looking too. Broad chest, carefully groomed hair—modeling comes to mind. Sharp jaw, thrust in profile so I can admire it. Diamond in his ear, catching the sun. Who doesn’t love a man who needs female validation? Gives you a fighting chance. I realize he’s dug his feet into the sand. I look out to the ocean; he follows my gaze and we stay that way for a few minutes.

  “Do you plan on swimming?” he asks without looking away from the water.

  I shrug.

  He laughs—a beautiful, rehearsed laugh, and holds out his hand. “Come.”

  I take my time with my suit. When I’m done he’s waiting by the water. I can see now he’s already been in. His trunks—which are European and small—are wet and clinging to his thighs.

  The water is warm, and he swims with powerful strokes. I can make out his arms slicing through the waves as if they were small mountains and he a giant dividing them in two.

  Past the wave breaks we float on our backs. He laughs and says, “I don’t usually see anyone on my beach.”

  “Is this yours, then?”

  He smiles, very good teeth, and takes my wrist gently.

  “Come, I’ll show you how to bodysurf tandem.”

  We do this a few times, him beneath me, the water pulling us toward the beach. Then we’re tumbling, falling beneath a wave. My legs shake from the effort. When he notices he says he’ll massage them, holding them tight and rubbing with his thumbs.

  We go up to his house—the light beige one that I’ve walked past so many times. It’s funny where you can end up, the places that become center stage.

  He lets me shower and change and asks if I’m hungry. We walk down to the cafés and other women look at him, pretending not to but catching him whenever they can. I see men look too. He orders us sandwiches and buys two bottles of wine. We hold hands now and he strokes my forearms and talks about his job producing Latino television programs.

  None of this matters to me, frankly. I’m just glad not to be alone. I need noise to drown out that inner ringing, that pulse of anxiety before it goes full pitch. I ask about his life, and can’t tell if he’s telling the truth. I suspect he’s lying. I don’t care either way. Back at his house he says he’d like to see me naked again.

  “American women are always nervous about their bodies, but you’re different. You’re something else.”

  Whatever, I think, but I play along and undress for him.

  “Radiant,” he says. “But ah, a sunburn! Lie down, Mama, I’ll be back.”

  I’m obedient, and when he returns it’s with a bottle of cold aloe, which he rubs on every single part of me.

  That familiar boil starts at my knees, and then I’m at the mercy of my body, panting and sighing, and asking him to come in me. I do not think of Eric. Except sometimes. When I slide into pleasure looking up at the skylight swimming far above us, and when I’m on my stomach and the sheets smell like the hotel where Eric and I used to meet. It does not take either of us long to finish.

  After, he asks my name and if he can see me again. Not this weekend, I say. This weekend I’ll be in Catalina with friends.

  I give him a fake name. And yes he can call—here is a fake number to go with “Susanna,” the girl from San Diego County visiting her ailing grandparents in the city.

  He gets up then, to pour us more wine.

  * * *

  Back at the hotel the wine has worn off and I’m sore and my head hurts. The room seems smaller now, and the smell of cologne is stronger on me than the smell of the beach, so I shower and take two little white pills that might be Xanax or possibly Percocets. I let them dissolve under my tongue. Such bitterness.

  I’ve left Mary’s scarf draped over the back of a chair near the open window so that it tangles a bit in the breeze. No matter how much I air it out, it still smells like her. I’m afraid it will look awful on me, so I’ve resisted trying it on in front of a mirror. It’s a burnt dusky orange, similar to the color of the prescription bottles, only darker, and when the breeze lifts it up the light catches the underbelly and it’s two-toned—bright and dark.

  Looking at it depresses me, so I decide to leave it and people-watch in the lobby. The hotel boy—the one with the cleft chin—rides down with me in the elevator. He chews his lip and then says, “Are you enjoying your stay, everything in your room all right?”

  “The toiletries are shit,” I tell him seriously.

  The lights on the elevator buttons blink gold at each floor. I can see his throat working. He’s very young. His mouth opens and closes; there’s a blemish above his lip like a beauty mark.

  “But I’m probably taking too many showers.” I give him my slow smile. And when the elevator doors open with a polite ding, he’s smiling too. I read his badge. “Bye, Rex.”

  I walk through the open lobby, the breezy sunlit lounge. There are potted ferns and mirrored walls so that the light slants every which way. Outside there’s a group of women sitting together, drinking white wine and eating oysters. It’s late in the day, the sunlight warm and thin. They laugh and wave long, manicured nails. I wonder if they go together to get them done. This kind of sisterhood makes me want to cry, but instead I sit at a table beside them and order a bottle of pinot grigio. The waiter eyes me, his expression saying Lush.

  Don’t judge me, old man—just bring me my bottle.

  The biggest woman of the group, her turquoise earring
s brushing the tops of her bare shoulders, says to her girlfriends, “Well, if he can’t satisfy me, I’ll get a piece on the side who can.”

  The other women laugh into their hands, rocking back and forth over their table of shells, saying “You’re terrible” and wiping at their eyes.

  I try to be okay with sitting by myself. I take out my phone and scroll through it, pausing on Robby’s number—is it ever a good idea to call your ex-husband? The answer is always no. I move on to Charly’s. I should let her know I’m here.

  An older couple, retirement age, seat themselves across from me. His shirt is unbuttoned way too low; I can see his stomach hair. Her face is bloated, painted up like a marionette. They order a cheese platter and he sends his drink back twice. I hear him say, “Babe, get anything you want.”

  The waiter brings my bill and stays to turn the empty bottle of pinot grigio upside down in its bucket of ice. I say a little too loudly, “Charge it to my room.” The wine has gotten me drunk quickly, and I stumble when I stand. I can feel everyone looking at me; there’s really no one else to look at. The raucous ladies are suddenly regal, their mouths shut up tight, and that retired guy is squinting at me. There’s always so much in that look. I’ve seen it often, and always at some exhibition. Deciding whether something is beautiful or hideous, and it is such a fine line.

  It’s not very late, and back in my hotel room everything is spotless, the bed made, my breakfast tray removed. On the writing desk is a travel-size kit of facial creams from the hotel spa. I think of the room-service boy, Rex, how he has stolen this for me, and out comes a laugh so brusque and strange that I jump.

  I decide then there is really no avoiding it. Plus, I’m drunk. And those pills were most likely opioids. So I sit on the balcony facing the beach.